"He enjoyed collecting cars, but the connection is even more
personal," she said. "His first restaurant was near a Ford
manufacturing plant, and the workers in that plant were among his
most loyal customers."

The Ford plant was located across the street from the first
Chick-fil-A, and workers would often visit the restaurant during
their lunch breaks.

As Chick-fil-A grew from one location to hundreds, Cathy started
the car reward program to reward his best franchisees.

Jimmy Collins was president of Chick-fil-A in the 1970s when the
program was started.

"When we reviewed the sales at the end of 1974 and realized that
we had an operator, John Moniz, who had achieved a 41% sales
increase, we were amazed," Collins said in a company video.

"Our thoughts were: if we could motivate other people to do what
John had done, it would be great not only for the organization
but it would be great for individual operators," he said.

Back then, the company set a goal for operators to achieve at
least a 40% sales increase over the prior year to win a car. The
car that was awarded to operators was a Lincoln Continental Mark
IV, which was manufactured by Ford.YouTube/CrazyLegsProds

These days, the threshold for winning a car is a 17% sales
increase over the prior year.

So how many operators typically win?

Sixty-nine operators won cars in 2012, according to the
Norcross Patch. Chick-fil-A didn't provide any more
recent data on the program. Chick-fil-A has roughly 1,700
restaurants in the US.

Collins said the program has been a success.

"I think today we can look back and say this helped to build the
business, this helped to get operators make their stores more
successful," he said.